Frequently Asked Questions

Phoneless Garden is an iOS and Android app for more intentional phone use. When you open an app you chose, a calm pause appears first. You close the app or choose how long you want it for, and when that time is up, the pause comes back. There is no lockout and no score.

Phoneless Garden is for people who want to use their phones more consciously without being shamed, locked out, or made to feel like a failure. It is designed for anyone who has tried hard blockers or streak-based apps and found them too rigid or guilt-inducing to stick with, and for anyone who simply wants more intentional screen time.

You choose the apps you want to be more aware of. When you open one, a pause appears before the app does. It shows your time on these apps today and two buttons: close the app, or continue. If you continue, you choose how long you want, and the app opens for that time. When the time is up, the pause comes back, even in the middle of a video. You can close the app or take a few more minutes. Before more time there is a short wait with a question, and then you choose your time again.

The pause comes back over the app, even mid-scroll. You can close the app or tap A few more minutes. If you continue, a short wait follows with a question about the next few minutes, and then you choose a new time. Your timer runs on the clock, so it keeps running if you leave the app. Come back later and the time may already be up.

Yes. A fresh open starts with the first pause, which has no wait: you can close or continue right away. If you come back to an app within 30 minutes of its timer ending, you continue where you left off, and the pause shows that your time is up. After 30 minutes, the next open starts fresh again.

No. On iOS, Phoneless Garden uses Apple's Screen Time frameworks (ManagedSettings and ShieldConfiguration), the same system tools hard blockers use, but set up for a pause rather than a lockout. You can always continue. There is no passcode, no penalty for continuing, and nothing designed to override your choice.

Every app has its own timer, so a timer on one app never affects another. The short wait before more time is 15 or 30 seconds on the free plan, the same for all apps. With Premium you can set the wait for each app, from 5 to 90 seconds.

Any app installed on your phone. You choose which ones to track yourself, and nothing is added by default. Pick apps you want to use more mindfully, and skip apps you need to reach without delay.

On iPhone, an app behind the pause can't show notifications until you open it. This is how Apple's Screen Time shield works, and no app can change it. Notifications come through while that app's timer is running. That is why it helps to skip apps you need to reach right away, such as messaging you rely on for work.

Android requires a small ongoing notification while an app watches which apps are open. Phoneless Garden needs it for the pauses to work, so please don't turn it off in Android notification settings.

Your daily goal covers all the apps you chose. It is a reference point, not a limit: nothing locks when you go past it. Within your goal, Leafy, your plant, is happy. Past it, Leafy rests. It never wilts. You can offer yourself different goals for different kinds of days, such as a work day or a weekend, and pick one each morning.

Once a day you can log your mood. It shows above Leafy as weather: sun on great days, rain on hard ones. It is your mood, not the local forecast. Every mood is a normal day. After a few days, Insights shows how your mood and your phone time go together.

Most screen time apps treat all phone use as a problem to be reduced, with limits, lockouts, streaks, or scores. Phoneless Garden does not. You pick which apps to track and set your own daily goal, which can vary by day. A pause appears when you open those apps and again when the time you chose is up. You can always continue. There is no passcode, no streak, and no shame screen if you go past your goal. The result is more intentional screen time.

Not in the conventional sense. Conventional blockers lock you out once a limit is reached and add friction such as passcodes and hidden uninstall buttons to override your decisions when willpower fails. Phoneless Garden never locks you out. It asks you to stop for a moment, and the choice to close or continue is always yours.

No. There are no streaks to break, no badges to earn, and no shame screens for missing a goal. Insights show counts, not verdicts.

That is the gap Phoneless Garden was built for. Its philosophy is autonomy-supportive: noticing what you are doing is the goal, and what you do with that awareness is up to you.

Pausing is more effective than hard blocking for most people who want to keep using their apps but still notice when time passes. The apps people struggle with are designed by large teams to make users lose track of how long they have been using them. A pause exists to give back the sense of time those apps are designed to take away.

A moment of intention is each pause the app creates: when you open a tracked app, and when the time you chose is up. It gives you a brief space to notice what you are doing and decide whether to continue. Closing and continuing both count. Phoneless Garden is designed around this single idea: that small moments of awareness are more valuable than strict limits, because awareness is what makes any choice feel like yours.

The design is informed by widely-discussed ideas about how habits work and how autonomy affects behavior change, but the specific design of Phoneless Garden has not been tested and is not a research-backed product. It is an indie app built around a philosophy.

Yes. Phoneless Garden has no user accounts, no backend server, no third-party analytics, no advertising trackers, and no email collection. Your usage data, moods, notes, and settings stay on your device.

None that leaves your device. The app reads your phone's built-in screen time data through Apple's Family Controls and Device Activity APIs (iOS) or Android's UsageStatsManager (Android) to know when to show the pause screen. That data is processed locally and never sent anywhere.

No. There is no signup, no email required, no password, and no login. You install the app and use it.

No. Phoneless Garden has no server infrastructure. The app does not upload usage data, settings, or analytics anywhere.

No. There is no Google Analytics, no Facebook SDK, no advertising network, and no third-party crash reporting service. Crash logs use only the platform-native systems provided by Apple and Google, which you can opt out of in your phone's settings.

Subscriptions and free trials are managed by RevenueCat using an anonymous identifier, not your name or email. Payment itself happens through Apple's App Store or Google Play. The developer never sees your payment details.

Yes. The pause works on every app you choose on the free plan, and the free plan has no end date. Premium is an optional subscription that adds more control and deeper insights, and you can try it free before you pay.

The free plan includes the pause on every app you choose, one wait length for all apps (15 or 30 seconds), timer choices of 10 or 15 minutes, a daily goal with work day and weekend day types, mood logging, this week's Insights (including how your mood and your phone time go together), the last 7 days of history, and daily goal and mood reminders.

Premium includes everything in the free plan, plus a wait length for each app (5 to 90 seconds), your own timer choices from 5 to 60 minutes, Month and All time views in Insights, patterns such as your rhythm through the day and your mood over time, your full history, more day types including your own, and deeper pause questions that follow your daily goal.

Premium is a subscription. The available plans and prices are shown in the app, in your local currency, before you subscribe. Prices can vary by region.

You start the trial by choosing a subscription on the Premium screen, which appears at the end of setup and whenever you tap Try Premium free. The trial length and the price are shown there before you confirm. The trial runs through the App Store or Google Play, and when it ends, the subscription starts automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before. Before the trial ends, the app sends a reminder and a summary of what Premium found in your own days, so you can decide from your own numbers. Apple and Google decide who is eligible, usually one free trial per account. If you skip the trial, you keep the free plan.

You are not charged. Cancel any time before the trial ends in your App Store or Google Play subscription settings. Depending on the store, Premium stops right away or when the trial ends. After that, the app continues on the free plan, your data stays, and Premium settings go back to the free options.

Yes. Subscriptions are managed through your Apple or Google account and can be cancelled at any time. You keep Premium until the end of your current billing period.

Phoneless Garden runs on iPhone (iOS 16 and later) and Android phones (Android 8.0 Oreo, API level 26, and later).

The pause relies on the system telling the app when you open a tracked app and how long you have used it. On iOS this uses Apple's Family Controls and Device Activity frameworks. On Android it uses the UsageStatsManager API, plus permission to display over other apps so the pause can appear. The permissions are required for the app to function, and the data accessed never leaves your device.

No meaningful battery impact in normal use. The monitoring uses platform-native APIs.

The pause, your settings, and your usage data all work offline. Subscription status is verified through RevenueCat, which needs an internet connection occasionally to confirm your Premium access.

The screen time APIs provided by Apple and Google have known quirks that no third-party app can fully fix, and Phoneless Garden is being actively worked on to make the data it shows as accurate as possible. On iOS, the data may still occasionally be off. In most cases it resets when you re-select your tracked apps, or automatically as the day rolls over and the daily counter resets. If you see persistently wrong data, please email support so it can be investigated.

The pause relies on signals from the operating system, and those occasionally arrive late. On iPhone, Apple sometimes shows its own generic Restricted screen instead of the Phoneless Garden pause, or brings the pause back a little late after a timer ends. Opening the app again, or opening Phoneless Garden, usually fixes it right away. If it happens to you often, please email support so it can be investigated.

Only a few. You can turn on a daily goal reminder and a mood reminder at times you choose, and if you start a free trial, the app reminds you before it ends. On Android there is also the small ongoing notification the system requires while the app watches your apps. Reminders can be turned off in the app or in your phone's settings.

Phoneless Garden is built by an independent solo developer.

Email support@phonelessgarden.com. For a bug, it helps to include your phone model, what you were doing, and what you expected to happen. Every message is read by the developer.